so treasonable a purpose. In short, according to their own expression;
he treated them "as if they had been rogues and vagabonds." The Marquis
of Havre, high-born though he was, had been sufficiently used to such
conduct. The man who had successively served and betrayed every party,
who had been the obsequious friend and the avowed enemy of Don John
within the same fortnight, and who had been able to swallow and inwardly
digest many an insult from that fiery warrior, was even fain to brook the
insolence of Robert Melun.

The papers which the deputation had brought were finally laid before
the states of Artois, and received replies as prompt and bitter as the
addresses were earnest and eloquent. The Walloons, when summoned to hold
to that aegis of national unity, the Ghent peace, replied that it was not
they, but the heretic portion of the states-general, who were for dashing
it to the ground. The Ghent treaty was never intended to impair the
supremacy of the Catholic religion, said those provinces, which were
already on the point of separating for ever from the rest. The Ghent
treaty was intended expressly to destroy the inquisition and the
placards, answered the national-party. Moreover, the "very marrow of
that treaty" was the-departure of the foreign soldiers, who were even
then overrunning the land. The Walloons answered that Alexander had
expressly conceded the withdrawal of the troops. "Believe not the
fluting and the piping of the crafty foe," urged the patriots. "Promises
are made profusely enough--but only to lure you to perdition. Your
enemies allow you to slake your hunger and thirst with this idle hope of
the troops' departure, but you are still in fetters, although the chain
be of Spanish pinchbeck, which you mistake for gold." "'Tis not we,"
cried the Walloons, "who wish to separate from the generality; 'tis the
generality which separates from us. We had rather die the death than not
maintain the union. In the very same breath, however, they boasted of